Review: Arcadian Atlas Is Adequate

It’s always interesting to see what happens when a Kickstarter project finally appears. Arcadian Atlas appeared on the crowdfunding site back in 2016, and it’s finally shown up seven years later in 2023. While it’s fine and has some great spritework, it also feels quite unbalanced and often a little too easy.

With Arcadian Atlas, players get to see the affects of royal decisions and wars on the people in power and those around them. When a king dies, his wife Queen Venezia succeeds him and declares her stepdaughters illegitimate to get them out of the way. However, that doesn’t mean they disappear. Lucretia begins to fight to reclaim her birthright, with the warrior Vashti on her side. Vashti’s lover Desmond remains in Venezia’s employ. Meanwhile, Lucretia’s sister Annalise is finding her own potential sense of power and recourse. Throughout the story, we see different sides of the conflict and, as you might expect, become pivotal players in the fate of the world. Especially since at some specific moments, we get a chance to make decisions that can shift the course of the story.

Screenshot by Siliconera

Arcadian Atlas is your typical turn-based strategy game. A fight begins with you getting to deploy some of your units. When the match begins, you’ll see where opponents are positioned. Success comes from either wiping out all enemies or getting out of the area while keeping your “main characters” alive. (If one of them dies, you have three turns to get a healer over to revive them.) Each class has various skills, with some like the Warmancer mages featuring abilities that take additional time to cast.

The biggest problem with Arcadian Atlas is a balancing issue. The first is that its battles are quite short and simple. I figured the prologue battle only lasted about three turns as an example, but it isn’t uncommon for most fights to be finished in a handful of turns. This is partially due to the fact that it isn’t difficult to whittle down enemies’ health and SP for special attacks being so plentiful that you can use your best moves frequently. An abundance of Command Points means you can also make anything you’d need to buy incredibly cheap, so you can load up on any equipment you might need.

Image via Twin Otter Studios

Worse, the class system feels uneven. There are are four base ones, with two promotion options for each one as they advance. However, the Apothecary feels ridiculously broken. It features ranged attacks and abilities, with many able to hurt enemies or heal allies. The second most useful end up being the Rangers, due to its even greater range. Oddly enough, there’s no benefit to getting units to higher ground that I can see, which seems unusual for this sort of game. Also, it’s impossible to see enemy ranges. But given that maps never get too big and you can’t even rotate them to get a better sense of perspective and positioning, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that this option wasn’t there.

It’s also generally quite easy, aside from a handful of endgame battles getting a bit overwhelming. Which isn’t a bad thing, per se. Sometimes someone might want a less strenuous strategy game. But the problem comes when you set the difficulty as “Harder,” the most challenging one available, and I didn’t really notice that much of a difference from “Standard.” I can only imagine what the easiest “Story” and “Relaxed” options are like. Fights are fine, if fast. And there’s no hassle about getting units up to speed, as ones you hire will be at your level and everyone deployed gets experience even if they never got a chance to act.

Image via Twin Otter Studios

Honestly, it’s the way Arcadian Atlas looked that left the greatest impression on me. The character designs are quite intricate, especially with the character sprites you’ll see on the field. I didn’t expect them to be so expressive, resulting in some fun animations during story segments. I wish the actual character portraits offered that same degree of expression. Likewise, the maps look really good, even if you can’t rotate them.

Arcadian Atlas is fine. It’s not revolutionary or remarkable, but it’s entertaining enough. Especially if you’re looking for a tactical title that looks and feels a little like Final Fantasy Tactics, albeit is a bit simpler and less of a challenge. It isn’t going to really challenge you, and odds are you’ll find a team that helps you “break” the game pretty quickly. But it has its moments.

Arcadian Atlas is available on PCs.